13 April 2012

"Product designer and co-founder of the Berlin-based design studio SHAPES iN PLAY Johannes Tsopanides worked on translating abstract information into objects. Nowadays information is easily accessible and omnipresent. Due to the quantity and complexity it is yet hard to make use of the information available. Thus there is a increasing significance for tools that help us making data graspable. infObjects is such a tool. In comparison to most contemporary information visualisations it uses the medium product to pass on information by means of generative design tools." See more;

"The topic of food turned out to be an interesting field for investigation. It concerns everyone and at the same time is questioned far too little. Searching for key data within food sector energy content, CO2 equivalent and price were considered as decisive factors within the examination. These data are particularly significant as they vary a lot from edible to edible and furthermore give information about the content when directly compared.

Staying within the field of food Johannes Tsopanides designed a series of tableware objects – a cup, a bowl and a plate that accordingly to the data will be various in shape. Yet following the same rules the objects still turn out clearly different. By means of a digital application as Processing the parameters are translated into 3d vectors that later constitute the product. From there on it is possible to save an .stl-file and realise the products via additive technologies.

Each object then represents a certain dish, a potato pie for example would be illustrated as a plate. A segmentation within the object shows the single ingredients. Decisive though are the three factors that parametrically give the unique shape for each dish:

A high content of energy causes the growth of small roots on the outer surface of the object.

The CO2 equivalent of a dish is visualised by the appearance of `ozon holes´ that indicate how much greenhouse gas has been produced during breeding and processing of a single edible.

The price of an ingredient has been illustrated by rising the edge of a segment in relation to the value.

The products are not intended to be objects of utility. The opposite is the case: The information does not only have direct impact on the shape but furthermore also influences the functionality. So that for example a lot of CO2 produced is illustrated by many holes that will lead the product even further away from usability. This `unfunctionality´ is revealed at first glance and it is exactly this moment of surprise that emphasizes the project´s true intention: raising awareness for the topic of how food is produced and consumed by means of a graspable object, for example within the context of an information campaign."

Prototypes were done with support of EOS and created with polyamid lasersintered.

A digital art based research which encourages the dissemination of creative concepts and aesthetics from fields such as Computer Graphics, Internet & Video Art with a high emphasis on abstract and geometric aesthetics as well as on experimental processes and techniques